Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say that I am surprised. Mr. Cuff, in committee, was given what was almost a eulogy in terms of his ability and the fact that he, of all people in western Canada and the Northwest Territories, was the one that was the most suited to do the kind of work that the Minister talked about with governance issues, with this wide range of requirements, and yet the Minister tells me she has no idea what kind of major work this man did, other than he came highly recommended. We are entrusting recommendations on the future of the health care of the Northwest Territories and yet in this public forum for the people to be reassured that in fact this knight in shining armour on his white horse is in fact the man for the job, the information is not there.

I would like to ask the Minister, could she find out? I do not want to wait until next week once we have passed this budget to ask Mr. Cuff if he was involved in the almost continuous reorganization of health and social services that has taken place in Alberta in the last number of years. If that is where he has cut his teeth and won his spurs, I think it is important we know that, because the Alberta government took a very specific position and strategy in dealing with health boards and health care services that put them on a roller coaster in terms of services, cutting and slashing and downsizing and dismantling. Then once they had money from oil, pouring money back in, trying to shore up the system that they so vigorously a few years prior were dismantling.

This man comes to us from Alberta with high praise and I would like to know, and I think the people have the right to know, what kind of work did he do that makes him the man who is going to be able to provide the recommendations that are going to guide this government and the people of the Northwest Territories for the next number of years? The recommendations that are finally going to be put in place after years and millions of dollars of studies.

I would like to ask the Minister, if she does not have that information, can she get it? Thank you.

Before the Minister responds, I just want to remind the Members that what happens within the committees is not privy to this House and that should stay in committee unless there is a report tabled in this House. On that particular matter, it has not been. I would ask the Minister to reply, especially in regard to the knowledge of the Minister and her department.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cuff and his team of associates do come very highly recommended. Mr. Chairman, I hope that Mr. Miltenberger feels that he has an adequate number of sound bites for the media in his remarks today.

I would like to suggest that Mr. Cuff is a very highly respected and very professional individual, and I am very embarrassed that in this House he should be referred to as things like "a knight in shining armour" and the other myriad of analogies and remarks that Mr. Miltenberger has made about Mr. Cuff. I am very sorry for that.

As far as the fear-mongering about Mr. Cuff's ability to provide this government with recommendations, I would like to, for the confidence of the people, assure them that we have chosen the best person we could find with experience in this area.

The recommendations that come forward from the Cuff review will be exactly that, and it will be myself and the Members of this Legislative Assembly who will responsibly work together to look at those recommendations and decide whether or not they should be implemented and whether those recommendations will benefit our system for the benefit of all our residents.

As to some background information on some of the previous work that Mr. Cuff has done, I am going to ask Ms. Ballantyne if she could outline a few more details of that. Thank you

Thank you. Ms. Ballantyne.

Thank you. I do not have many more comments to make, but I did not have enough time last time around to ask a question, a specific question with respect to nursing shortages, specifically in Yellowknife.

When I was talking to some people about what was going on and the question surrounding the reopening of the surgical unit at Stanton, I received mixed messages about what is happening with the respect to the shortage of nurses. Some of the people I talked to said that there are nurses in town who could possibly apply for jobs there and work there, except that they may be looking at some flexibility, working on a part-time basis or working on weekends only. The more I found out about it, and I talked to nurses and nursing representatives from the Registered Nurses Association and anybody I could get a hold of, it appears there is quite a complex system of how we recruit and retain nurses and the compensation packages that go with that.

I do not know. I am not very clear about how this works.

Maybe I could ask the Minister to explain about what is involved in the market supplement? I asked a question in the House and the Minister was supposed to provide that information. Can I just get that information on market supplement?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, specifically in relation to the recruitment that Stanton is undertaking right now, the recruitment efforts, our indications are that if sufficient staff could be hired, the surgical unit will reopen on Monday, March 5th. All indications are that they are putting all of the effort that they can into identifying those nurses.

One of the recruitment tools that we have used for RNs in the past has been the temporary nursing market supplement. This was something that was put in place to address the shortages in the Northwest Territories. It was to ensure that the benefits are competitive with other jurisdictions across Canada.

The current two-year funding agreement expires March 31st, but the main estimates do include funding for one more year for this program. We feel that the shortages and the demand for nurses is still such that we need to continue that.

There are some UNW issues surrounding the extension of that supplement because there are some ramifications of having something like a market supplement in place for a number of years. We do agree that adequate compensation is critical to retaining staff, keeping pace with the recruiting efforts that are going on in other jurisdictions.

We are feeling that the Stanton board is doing everything that they can with the offer that they have available to make to nurses to recruit for those positions that would allow the reopening of the surgical unit. I do not have the most recent information on the results of those efforts, but we can certainly keep Members apprised of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Following up on that, I think it is now February 20th. March 5th is not too far away. I am not sure if a lot can happen in two weeks. I hope that the Minister is keeping track of that and she is working with the board on a contingency plan on how to address this.

In talking to some of the doctors, I think the reality is that we have doctors who are sitting around and cannot do the surgeries because there are no nurses. It is a very critical situation, as the Minister is aware. I do not know if all of the plans on paper are going to be adequate. I am not sure what I can tell my constituents. I know there are people really anxious to see that open. I cannot emphasize enough the crucial and important nature of this problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we can undertake to speak with the Stanton management again, but just to restate that our latest information that we have from Stanton is that they do plan to reopen the surgical ward on March 5th. In response to the Member's concerns and in view of our support for that happening, I will follow up with the management at Stanton to find out what the latest information is. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have had a lot of concerns, and I have been receiving calls from my constituency, especially when children end up being taken away from their families because of alcohol problems within the families. I think that we as a government have to do more to try to reunite families than to take their children away and not deal with the problems at home, especially when we are dealing with alcohol. In a lot of the native communities, it is a problem, but there are people there who can help to try to offset that problem.

When it comes to aboriginal children being taken away from the communities and are brought here to Yellowknife, because of the distance and what not, we have to do more as a government to find ways of working with the families to work out their problems or their difficulties so that we can reunite families instead of having the problems that we have seen in the past, especially where we have seen children taken away to go to hostels for quite a few years, and the problems we are now seeing because of that.

I think aboriginal children should be allowed to remain in the communities with relatives, grandparents, if possible. I have been approached by grandparents who wanted these children to remain in the community but yet the department made the decision to have them sent to Yellowknife.

I think it is important that as a government, you just mentioned that we will be spending a couple of million dollars to find these people to deal with the major problem. We cannot continue to do what we think is best for someone because we know best. I think we as a government have to start realizing that we cannot continue to play big daddy or big momma, because we are not there to take people away from families. At the end of it all, we have a bigger problem after doing that, especially learning from the hostel experience in the Northwest Territories. It is not a perfect world that we think it is.

In the long term, we pay for it through the correctional system, the jail system, and also the health system because of the effects on the family in areas of alcoholism, drug abuse, and whatnot. We as a government have to start doing more to find ways to assist families where we know there is an alcohol problem, to send them for treatment as a family, as a unit. If there is a problem with one person in the family, you do not send the one person away and then they come back to the family and nothing changes. You have to change the problems that originate in the whole community.

The biggest problem in our communities, as everyone knows, is alcoholism, especially when it comes to family break-ups or children being taken away from families. I bet you 99.9 percent of the time it is because of alcohol. I think if anything we should be putting more money into alcohol and drug treatment programs and make sure that the parents of those children have the option; that they take the treatment, take the program and then they will be able to access their children. Do not take them away from the community, their region, their grandparents, and take them to another foreign place, regardless of if it is the city of Yellowknife or Edmonton.

We have seen too much of that where people say, "We know what is best for you. We will take your problems out of your community" and at the end they do not help with the original problem in the community to begin with. I think as a government we have to do more and find new ways and initiatives rather than just being the big hammer and saying "We know what is best for you, and will continue to do it because we have the laws, regulations and jurisdiction because we passed legislation in this House giving us that power".

I think you have to put some of that power back to the people, back to the communities, especially in the communities where you have some good people who are trying to do some good things. They get frustrated when they see that the problem is there, and all you do is take the individual out of the community. You do not deal with the problem at the root.

With that, I would like to ask the Minister exactly what she is doing to improve reuniting families and children with their parents, especially the First Nations people, tribes and cultures that are up here to ensure that those children do not lose sight of that because they were taken away? We have seen that happen elsewhere in Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Krutko raises some very good issues that do need to be addressed. Just by way of information about the removal of children from their community, our statistics indicate that over 80 percent of the children who are placed in care are placed in their own communities. In order to enhance the availability of foster care placements in communities, as a part of that $1.2 million critical investment that we have identified in the budget, part of that is training foster parents to make them more confident in their ability to deal with special needs and children who may need to be in temporary care in a more adequate way

Certainly enhancing the number of child protection workers and social workers will also enhance our ability to get involved in families where there may be some indicators that would suggest that there are going to be problems in that family. It allows for the human resources for earlier intervention before things escalate to the point where children do have to be removed from the home. I agree with the Member that needs to be viewed as a last recourse.

Mr. Chairman, what we try to find is the balance between the intervention of removing children from their homes and the need to protect children. We have an obligation as a government to protect children, so we try to find that balance. Sometimes it is not always easy. I totally agree with you, that we need to address what the underlying causes are of the conditions in these families that might cause them to not be able to properly care for their children. You have identified probably one of the most prevalent causes, that is dependence on and abuse of alcohol.

A lot of our programs are very interconnected and try to address the needs of families. The $1.2 million critical investment also includes funding for a pilot project to have a plan of care committee in the community which could include extended family members, and elders as well, who certainly would have something significant to contribute. Advice and direction on the care of children who may be, for whatever reason, at risk. On this pilot project for a plan of care committee, the Dogrib region has expressed interest in piloting this project, and certainly that is very welcome news to us.

I think that the more responsible people who can get together and get involved at the community level, the better it is for the children in question. Sometimes it is difficult for social workers because there are constraints around the sharing of confidential information that they may have when they go through their screening process of people who may be interested in fostering. There are certain standards and criteria that are important to meet so that we can be assured of the safety and security of the children while they are in care.

Sometimes it is not possible to share that kind of information, so it may be frustrating to people who are interested in this. Again, that is just part and parcel of the safeguards we put in place for the care of children. We are recognizing this as an issue and are attempting to respond to it by enhancing the services available and the quality of care in individual communities.

I agree with the Member that it is very traumatic to remove children from their home, and certainly that trauma can be further realized when they have to be removed from their community as well. Then, not only do they not have the familiarity of the family circumstances, but also things like school, friends and those kinds of surroundings.

We are encouraging communities to become involved in this important issue, and are hoping that they will realize the need that we have for them to work with us and the front-line workers to ensure the best possible circumstances when there are unfortunate circumstances of risk for them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, rather then being embarrassed and apologetic about my measured tactful comments and questions, I would suggest that the Minister might want to consider being embarrassed and apologetic about once again turning her back on the public tendering process, yet again going out to a sole-source contract for hundreds of thousands of dollars to a southern contractor, by-passing the northern expertise and turning her back on the northern solution for northern problems.

Having said that, I do have some questions about budgets. If in fact we have at least four health boards that do not have approved budgets for this year, that it is uncertain what the deficit is, what the bottom line will be at the end of the fiscal year, what figures are being used in the main estimates given that uncertainty and lack of clear financial information to make that determination? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, all of the boards currently have contribution agreements from which they are working. The area of uncertainty is surrounding the deficits which have come to light in the past fiscal year. These are all being worked on and attempting to be addressed under the current policy that exists for deficit recovery.

Where the boards have been able to provide clear information and an indication that the costs are associated with forced growth and costs that are outside of their control, there have already been approvals made in some instances and money extended to these boards. In areas where there is still some uncertainty surrounding them, that there is not a clear plan of action with respect to the deficits.

As to how we prepared the estimates for our department in view of this particular information which is not available at this time, I am going to ask Mr. St. Germaine if he would respond to how we developed our main estimates. Thank you.